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While we might imagine playwrights working alone, collaboration is the hallmark of the playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher, one of our country's most produced writers for young audiences. Tell Your Story examines six of Asher's finest plays, focusing on how the stories told in the scripts reflect her life, her philosophy and her collaborative methods of play development. Asher's plays have emerged from a variety of sources including oral histories, traditional tales, young adult novels, picture books, poems and young people's writings. The playwright's means of telling her stories on the stage have been as wide-ranging as her source material. The introduction of each play places it in the larger context of Asher's dramatic repertory, and the plays are followed by descriptions of how the script was developed and what its development process may teach us about creating new works for and with young people. The book includes a biography of the playwright and a description of her other dramatic and nondramatic works. This collection, edited by two directors who wrote their doctoral dissertations on new play development and who have worked with Asher on multiple projects, provides a unique overview of one of the most significant bodies of dramatic literature in the field of theatre for young audiences.
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Katrina goes in search of her Prince, who is held captive by an evil Troll princess in a dreary castle east of the sun and west of the moon, and on the way she meets three wise women who share hilarious stories.
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Through acting edition
This play chronicles the life of Sojourner Truth from the day she is sold away from her family as a girl, through her struggle to free herself and her son, to her emergence as a respected figure advocating abolition and women's rights. Throughout her life, she came upon injustice and fought it with uncommon clear-sightedness, courage and wit. This title combines her actual words with authentic slave songs, spirituals and folk songs of the period.
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Maggie's grandmother is dying, and she is upset she had to cancel her summer plans to go with her mother to visit. She meets a very imaginative neighbor, and a hospice worker who help her realize unhappy endings can't always be avoided, but good things can blossom from it.
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Michael's father is mapping out his entire life for him. After meeting new friends, and making his own decisions, Michael finds himself in an abusive relationship between friends, a place his father tried to protect him from.
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Froggie listens as Rabbit reads some favorite fairy tales that are magically brought to life for the audience on a puppet stage above Rabbit's bookshelves. But when Froggie invites dozens and dozens of his frog cousins in for a story, Rabbit's patience runs out. Rabbit sends them away, then slowly comes to realize that sharing stories with enthusiastic listeners is a different kind of life—and he likes it!
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Through acting edition
What is a family? Playwright Sandra Fenichel Asher traveled the country running workshops in which teenagers and adults pondered that question and experimented with monologues and scenes based on significant events and interactions in their own families. The resulting script is a montage that gives every member of its large cast challenging opportunities for both solo and ensemble work. Family Matters presents the "full catastrophe" of family life, embracing its comic, dramatic, farcical and tragic realities. In the first section, "Talk," the eldest son of the core family reveals to his mother that far from his model student image, he's on the verge of flunking out of school; another mother regrets never telling her child the truth about his birth father; and the core family's rebellious daughter and her dad find it difficult to communicate in even the most superficial way. "Secrets" dips into the private worlds that three teens can reveal to only their very best friends, worlds darkened by abuse, mental illness and sexual assault. "Stuff" deals with the impact of "a look, a touch, a word, a smile" on teens and other family members as they attempt to reach out to one another. Family Matters was commissioned by the award-winning Youth Theatre at the U (University of Utah) and premiered at the Babcock Theatre. It was selected for further development as part of the Open Eye Theater's Bear Bones Series, funded in part by an Aurand Harris Grant from the Children's Theatre Association of America.
License Available:
Through acting edition
